


Lay All Your Laundry On the Bed (I’ll Lay In It Instead)

by orphan_account



Series: White Picket Fence, I'll Put A Rock On Your Finger [4]
Category: Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Domestic, Flowers, M/M, Mentions of Civil Rights Abuses, Thinly veiled threats, Valentine’s Day, implied sex, physical intimacy, proposal, the little prince references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 22:13:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17795711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Slade forgets Valentine’s Day.





	Lay All Your Laundry On the Bed (I’ll Lay In It Instead)

**Author's Note:**

> Had to do a fic for my boys on Valentine’s Day :)

Slade arrived home late, having been delayed by the shower he indulged in a motel room.

He’d had blood to rinse, and it wouldn’t do to needlessly upset Dick by staining their marital bed with Slade’s contentious career consequences.

When he opened the door, all was quiet. Dick’s keys lay abandoned on the entryway table, and when Slade entered the living room, he noticed strewn kettle ball weights and the treadmill, pulled from the spare garage. Indicators that Dick hasn’t gone on patrol. The fact he’d gone through the trouble of moving the treadmill in front of the television further indicated that Dick spent his afternoon continuing the Robin Hood movie adaptions marathon he began the week before.

Ignoring the mess, which would be Dick’s responsibility to clean under Slade’s reproachful eye, Slade went to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and was pleasantly surprised (shocked) to find three mason jars of Slade’s preferred green smoothie. They hadn’t been there when Slade left, and so it must have been Dick’s doing. Slade popped one of the jars open and took a hesitant sip. Pleased, Slade downed the smoothie, and then another. He rinsed the jars and placed them in the dishwasher before approaching the bedroom.

The door was cracked, and so Slade only nudged it enough to peer inside.

Dick was asleep, on top of the meticulously made bed. He was curled around one of Slade’s pillows, his jaw slack. He wore nothing but heart patterned boxer briefs and scented lotion, something like almond, jasmine, and vanilla.

There was a cluster of some orange plant on Slade’s remaining pillow. It stood stark against the navy pillowcase, and Slade frowned before slipping inside to investigate.

Slade hovered at the side of the bed, his eye on Dick. Dick’s breathing remained even and his eyelashes didn’t so much as flutter. Slade still didn’t trust he was asleep, but nevertheless he glanced away in favor of picking up the bundle on his pillow.

The cluster of orange flowers were cosmos, tied together by a royal blue ribbon. Entangled in the bow was a white gold ring, studded with black diamonds in the same pattern of Dick’s own ring, which hung heavy on Dick’s left, lax hand.

“Will you marry me?” Dick mumbled, voice thick with sleep. Slade returned his attention back to Dick, whose blue eyes shone in the sparse light cast by the open doorway.

“We’re already married,” Slade said, still clutching his petite bouquet. “We honeymooned in the Maldives. You nearly impaled yourself on coral.”

A soft smile quirked Dick’s lips. “I know, I was there. But I never got you a ring. You gave me a ring, and I didn’t even have one for you.” Dick sat up, rolling his neck to stretch. Slade watched the exposed column of Dick’s throat and quelled the urge to wrap his fist around it. The kid had no right.

“You asked for a ring,” Slade growled. Dick blinked at him.

“You didn’t buy that ring in an airport gift shop, Slade,” Dick murmured. “You don’t have to wear it, I just wanted to give you the choice.”

This was a claim. Dick was asserting a claim, and if not a claim, then he was asserting a break in their arrangement thus far. Slade was to dictate the boundaries, Dick was to bask in the protection Slade afforded him. Dick was Slade’s rose. But Slade was not Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Dick never did take well to glass domes.

Slade slid the ring onto his finger. It fit perfectly. He’d noticed a few weeks prior that the wedding band from his and Adeline’s marriage had appeared disturbed in the wooden box Slade kept in the house’s panic room. Dick must have taken it as a measurement reference.

“The flowers?” Slade asked. “I’d never take floriology as one of your interests.”

“It’s not,” Dick murmured, crawling across the bed towards Slade. He sat up on his knees and wrapped his arms around Slade’s neck. “I have no idea what those mean, if they mean anything. But they’re pretty and orange. You’re pretty, and you like orange.”

Slade snorted.

“Besides,” Dick continued, leaning forward to kiss Slade’s temple, “I’d never take you for a roses and chocolate kinda guy.” Dick’s hand slid underneath the hem of Slade’s shirt, and he splayed his fingers across Slade’s abdomen. “Feel free to correct me.”

“I washed the blood off my skin at a motel,” Slade growled. Dick smiled against Slade’s skin, so Slade added, “I keep my guns in a glass display case in the same room where you watch cartoons.”

Dick’s hand crept towards Slade’s chest, his wrist hiking up Slade’s shirt.

“I kill, kid,” Slade warned. “Your devotion’s misplaced.”

That brought Dick to a pause. Dick pulled back and blinked at Slade, mouth set in a grim line. “I extrajudicially assault criminals before they’re so much as offered an opportunity for due process. I visit them in the hospital. After they tousle with me, or B. I’ve seen what a batarang does to a trachea, what B’s home brewed explosives do to flesh. The charge in my escrima sticks aren’t enough to kill, until the day I press them against a bad heart.

“I can’t legally testify at trials, not as Nightwing. Trials require witnesses to bare their faces, so that the accused can at least face their accusers. I deny my perps that dignity.

“They may deserve consequences, I don’t arrest on presumption, but I’m cognizant of the rights I circumvent and, sometimes, strip.”

Dick’s mouth brushed down Slade’s face until their lips nearly touched.

“I know what you are, Slade Wilson,” Dick murmured against Slade’s mouth. “You don’t scare me.”

Slade reached up and snatched a fistful of Dick’s hair, yanking Dick’s head back and baring his throat. Dick’s mouth parted and his pupils visibly dilated. “I should,” Slade cooed. “I’m a scary man, Dick. You throw yourself off buildings and lay in the beds of monsters. What does that make you?”

“Honestly?” Dick asked, voice raspy through the uncomfortable angle of his neck. “Kind of super aroused.”

Slade rolled his eye but descended on Dick nonetheless, the flowers crushed and scattered between them.

Later, tangled in the afterglow, Slade lounged, spread and pliant, on his back. Dick was curled into his side, limbs molded into the planes of his body. A thought struck Slade.

“What’s the occasion?” He asked. “For the flowers.”

Dick picked up a wrinkled petal from the mussed, slightly damp bedding. “We’re married,” he told the petal.

“And?” Slade snorted.

Dick sat up and quirked his eyebrows at Slade. “And it’s Valentine’s Day, scary man. If you weren’t so good at your marital duties, I’d be offended. I also got us a stand mixer. For the holiday.”

Slade smirked. “Were you going to bake?”

Dick’s expression soured. “Yes. But I took a nap instead.”

Slade coaxed Dick back down by carding his fingers through Dick’s hair.

The next day, he baked Dick petit fours.


End file.
